The Irish Prime Minister has said this week that Ireland will legalise civil partnerships for gay couples. Bertie Ahern promised that he would soon open new offices for the country’s main gay rights groups, report Associated Press.

|PIC1|The move will see Ireland follow England, Wales and Scotland who all introduced the Civil Partnerships Act at the end of 2005, giving homosexuals similar rights to married heterosexual couples.

Even though civil partnerships have purposely been made not to be marriages, it allows homosexuals to have the same rights to inheritance, state benefits as well as a host of other financial rights that normal married couples enjoy.

The issue has been the centre of great controversy in the UK over the past year also. Previously the Church of England’s House of Bishops released a statement that caused heated debate throughout the religious spectrum in England.

One of the most senior bishops in the Church of England even issued a strong condemnation of the statement on Civil Partnerships, calling it “unbiblical”.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, rebuked the statement for undermining traditional teaching on marriage in a letter written to clergy in his diocese.

The Bishop of Rochester continued his attack on the Church of England’s leadership of the civil partnership controversy, criticising the permission it gave to the Government to change church legislation by order, so that the term ‘civil partner’ was automatically added wherever the term ‘spouse’ appeared.

|TOP|Rev. Nazir-Ali argued that the legislation was not needed on the grounds that the ambiguity of the Civil Partnerships Bill is not consistent with core Christian teaching on marriage and would be unacceptable to a substantial number of its members.

He warned that the statement has compromised pastoral discipline at the local level and pre-empted the relevant canons in the context of preparation for baptism and confirmation, as well as for the purposes of receiving Holy Communion.

The Evangelical Council has warned of the negative consequences of the Civil Partnerships Act following the hundreds of gay civil partnership ceremonies that took place up and down the country in December 2005.

The Chairman of the Church of England Evangelical Council, the Rev. Dr. Richard Turnbull, has also previously warned Christians in particular of the need to uphold the unique position of marriage between one man and one woman.

|AD|"We recognise, of course, the need for fair and equal treatment before the law for all people,” he said. “However, Christians need to be very concerned indeed at the assertion of moral equivalence between marriage and civil partnerships. They are not of equal moral standing.”

He added that Christians have a unique role to teach others about the sanctity of the traditional family.

Rev. Turnbull said: “Christians must be clear, while acting with sensitivity and care, to assert the Christian teaching that celibate singleness or monogamous marriage are the ways in which God has provided for the best moral family framework for society. We depart from that at our peril both as a society and indeed as a church."

Irish PM Ahern has commented that it would be more difficult to legalise gay marriage in Ireland than it had been in the UK. Ireland's constitution has a clause requiring the predominantly Roman Catholic state to protect the institution of marriage, whereas the UK, which includes neighbouring Northern Ireland, has no written constitution.

It is expected that the latest development will again stir up the controversial debate in Ireland and across the UK churches.